Pastor's Corner

There are three kinds of love: eros (sensual or romantic love), philia (serviceable or beneficial love), and agape (sacrificial or unconditional love). Which one of these best describes a mother’s love? It is agape, unconditional, sacrificial, untiring love.

A mother’s love is unconditional. Mother loves us whether we are beautiful or ugly, smart or dull, able-bodied or handicapped, a success or a failure in society, whether we are grateful to mother or ungrateful. Sometimes the work of a mother consists literally in feeding the mouth that bites her.

A mother’s love is sacrificial. Unlike the love of friendship where we look forward to some kind of reward, a mother’s love seeks to give even to the point of risking her life. This is the kind of love that made Jesus give up His own life to save us.

What about St Monica who spent her life running after her wayward child, Augustine, till she brought him to the knowledge of God, to sanity, to peace, to true love. All these qualities of a mother’s love are for us a foretaste of God’s tender and untiring love for us. And this is what we are celebrating today. We are celebrating mothers because through their hands God cares for us when we are in need, through their mouths God speaks to us words of consolation when we are heartbroken, through their heart God pours out to us his unconditional love that never gives up on us. That is the meaning of an old Jewish proverb that says, “God could not be everywhere, and therefore he made mothers.”

When we talk of mother, we mean all mothers, including single mothers, step-mothers, adopted mothers, and even spiritual mothers. Their task as mothers is the most important task in the world. Today we acknowledge it and we say, “God Bless You, Mothers.” I think the most beautiful thing that God ever created is a Mother.